Syracuse University Honors Dick Clark with Studio

Newhouse School facility to be renamed in honor of late alum

“America’s oldest teenager” Dick Clark is being honored by Syracuse University. The college’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications revealed plans to name its renovated studio facilities Dick Clark Studios, in tribute to the entertainer who graduated from the school in 1951.

Clark’s widow, Kari Clark, made the announcement for the naming plans at the school’s annual Mirror Awards ceremony that honors excellence in media industry reporting.

“Syracuse was always important to Dick and very close to his heart throughout his life,” Clark said. “It will mean so much to see his name attached to a school and a studio facility that will literally launch a thousand careers in this business. This is just a continuation of what he did with ‘Bandstand’—gave youth a stage, then got out of the way.”

At the ceremony, held in Cipriani in Gotham, special honors were given to Anne Sweeney, co-chair of Disney Media Networks and president of Disney-ABC Television Group, and Nate Silver, statistician, writer and founder of fivethirtyeight.com. Dick Clark, who died last year at age 82, was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Before his days on “American Bandstand,” Clark began his broadcast career with radio station gigs in Central New York, working at WAER-FM as an Syracuse student and at Utica’s WRUN radio, where his father, Richard A. Clark, also an alumnus (1918), was the station manager.